I’m usually good with remembering important dates

Apparently I’m loosing my touch…

Today is Tom’s 40th birthday.

And I totally FORGOT ABOUT IT! (Warning to reader, there will be lots of caps on this post)

Between the move, the house, and everything else that’s running around (without breaks) inside my brain, I TOTALLY FORGOT TOM’S BIRTHDAY.  And not just any birthday, but THE BIG ONE!!!

You know how I remember it? My iPhone sent me a reminder this morning. Let me repeat that for those in back of the room… MY IPHONE REMINDED ME THIS MORNING!

Bad, Bad, Bad…

The worse part of all of this is that, before THE MOVE, the new house, and everything else, I was really working this up. I was checking out travel sites, and out of the way nooks that I could zip him away for a BIG birthday weekend (like I did last year, and needed to top this year). Because, you know, it would be the BIG ONE! (Sorry, have I said that ALREADY?)

:::Sigh::

If it all had worked out, we will be on a plane today, en route to an International romantic location on the beach, just us, ready to drink sweet drinks with colorful umbrellas and lay on the hot Caribbean sun making sure we work those tan lines.

Instead, I’m at work, wondering how in the hell am I going to make up for this HUGE oversight. And, Internet,  I’m clueless! Totally and mentally void of any ideas. I cannot even come up with a good restaurant idea to take him! And trust me, after the total crazy I been dishing out for the past 3 weeks, he totally deserved the pampering.

This morning, after the reminder from the iPhone, I walked up to this sleepy man, sitting on our bed and sat on his lap and simply told him “Happy Birthday”. Just like that, no over-the-top hop-la, no hidden presents, not even a sappy card. Because, how do I begin to tell this man, what he means to me?

I could attempt to write something, about the relationship we have, the relationship I’m so damn proud of I want to list it on a top ten list and shout it out to the world. This man, who has been in my life for such a short time, but has made such a huge impact. He is my home, my friend, my love. He is full of loyalty and kindness and generosity and good times and great friends. Never judgmental, never opinionated, never pretentious. He is laughs and gestures and moments that astonish me with their simplicity and their magnitude.

He is at his best in spotted jeans and t-shirts full of holes, dirty hands and rolling on the floor with the dogs. He is stubborn, and forgetful and proud. He is a musician, a painter, a dreamer, a softy inside. He is my grand prize, my accomplishment, my voice of reason.  He is loved by his son, brother, mother and me.

And today he is another year older.

And today, I will offer a simple “Happy Birthday” and a promise that many more will come.

Hopefully with passports, and fruity drinks, and hot sand between our toes

Count down to start in 3…2…1 – GO!

Here we go; final stretch to the forties has officially started.

Yes siree, in approximately 24 hours (I was born in the AM) the numerous “old”, “saggy”, “over-the-hills” jokes will start and I will officially jump to my new “decade” (shit, did I just typed DECADE?). Maybe I should label this as the “turning point in my life”, since I am officially entering the “prime of my life,” which many say falls between the ages of forty and seventy.  And that internet, makes me a mere babe in the grand scheme of things!

On a previous post (16 days ago) I mention that I’m not freaking out about the whole birthday thing  (but I still have 24 hours to do so. There yet may be hope for that meltdown). Looking back on this past year (or years) I had many challenges, and in most cases I set goals I needed to accomplish in order to move on to the next phase of my life.  And in the last days of so, as I sat and remember my 20’s (a blur to be honest with you) and my 30’s (very, very painful period) I realized that has not happen with my upcoming forties and it leaves me a bit … uncertain.

Now what?

If I were able to make a wish and to not be the introspective freak that I am, I’d wish to remain on this path I’ve made for myself.   Which all in all, its not as bad as I sometimes think it is.

I meet the man of my dreams.  And marriage; children and all that it will bring are my next tangible goals.  And folks sometimes scares the pants off me more!

I built a beautiful circle of friends, who look out for me, love me, respect me and most of all put up with many of my crazy (and there is a lot of that).  HI GUYS!

I’d really like to have the privilege of watching my mother grow older gracefully for many more years to come. And to continue to have the opportunity to nurture a healthier relationship with my sister, because no matter how storming and whack it is at times, she is my baby sister and I would not trade her for anyone else in my life.

By this point in life, I know myself pretty well.  I’ve come to accept that if I wasn’t a size eight at twenty, I can’t expect to be a size eight now.  I have made peace with my boobs.  If they want to rest somewhere around the level of my navel, so be it.  I’m too old (see even I’m starting to do it!) to obsess about them anymore.  Besides, that’s what push-up bras (and plastic surgeons) are for. And the white gray hairs on my head have been conveniently hidden with highlights and lowlights by my stylist.

I know what I can let go of and what I need to work out so that I don’t feel anxious and lost. And believe me the past couple of years I have felt adrift. But, as I look around me, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, I see not a blur of uncertainly, but a period rich with possibilities.

In my forties, I’ll be moving forward, not only as someone’s wife or mother, sister or daughter or friend, but as the woman I’ve become somewhere along the way. In this decade, I intend to slow down and think and appreciate and learn.  And even if I have no great new accomplishment to show for the next ten years, I know the process will be a hell of a ride!

Back to the rat race… with possible finish line ending

I’m back to grueling work weeks, doing favors for family, friends, and strangers… which does not free up any of mine time… but apparently makes everyone else happy! bo hoo!

The good news.. I have brought the BF along for the crazy…so I really don’t feel so alone in all this frenzying. He has shown stream care in not freaking the f** up on me, when I’m totally going bat shit on him, due to the stress that I’m carrying around (new Birth control pills are not helping on the “mellow” cause he is searching for) In the next few weeks, I am looking forward to:

Birthday weekend get-away – taking the BF to a fancy, snazzy hotel (think big bathtub with jets and bathrooms that are bigger than NYC apartments), great show tickets, with a kick ass reservations in a fru-fru restaurant and a couple of roller coaster rides. Oh and a trip to IKEA (because you know.. its THERE!)

Trip: Phoenix, AZ – the bad news? its work related… the good news? it will be the first time in Phoenix and I have a rental car and I’M NOT AFRAID of using it! Any suggestions?

Still in the works… a trip to South America … this may or may not happen depending on the work load that now resides at my desk.

So as you can see, I’m running, running, running… with a possible finish line ending.

On hold

I know.. I know… I will be back.

In the works:

1. Surprise party for a friends husbands – Games! Food! and a Piñata are the main components, so you know that is going to be good.
2. Planning birthday weekend get-away for BFF celebration – HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHICA, how it feels to be OLD?
   :::ducking down from the daggers she is tossing my way as she read this::::
3. Baby shower is coming!
4. Date prospects in the horizon.
5. Major home re-decoration project in the works
6. which can only mean one thing
7. IKEA

New York Lights

I cannot even begin to write the good times we had in New York City. I need to seriously think if that would be a place that I would move to…. with a job that would pay m goggles of money, in order to live in Manhattan… that will be my only requirement.

The weather cooperated in full, meaning that for once the weather channel did not mess up and it was FREAKING COLD, the kind that you don’t feel your nose after 2 minutes of being outside. It was GREAT.

With a cab ride we landed on the steps of our host to drop the luggage and head for the street to find the first (and many) good restaurants… first up, the Vynl with 4 locations it pretty much cover the whole city. We ended up in the Upper East side location. I highly recommend you try the Butternut Chowder… creamy, a bit spicy and with a hit of coconut made it the ultimate soup with the cold weather outside. The Shrimp Pad Thai, according to my sister and everyone else that had a taste (including myself), was another hit.

After that good early dinner we headed to 5th Avenue for a bit of window shopping and lots of lights. Out of all of the windows we saw, Bergdorf Goodman had the most amazing ones… I could not decide which was my favorite, so I clicked away until I realized that I needed to save on the batteries, since there was more to come…

… we continue our walking tour and had to stop at one of the street vendors to get a bag of these hot little morsels, (every time I eat them it reminds me of my time living in Italy)…

Then we ended up at the Rockefeller Plaza in order to see the lights of the Christmas Tree, which this year were solar powered, so NYC has gone “Green”…

The amount of people out on the street in 30 degree weather was amazing to me… we were turning blue and the wind did not help but how can you resist not seeing this:

and while we did not get snow, the kind that gets stuck to your clothes and melts, we did see some of these up on the sky, which made us wish for the real thing, because we were not COLD enough:

One word: Magical

End of Oct.. .already?

Ok folks, this ride called 2007 is going way to fast… I mean that is it, in 2 days, October [as we know it] is over.. finito!  And here comes November… I mean were did the time go?  Where?  Because, somehow it seem to have passed me by and I was not paying attention!

I’m a bit freaked out because my birthday is within sight… like in 52 days.. and if this ride continues to go, go, go… its going to be smacking me front and center without me noticing it…. and then I’m going to freak out even more because this year.. well I hit the big three-nine.. and seriously, that is like one step closer to the big four-o and well, who wants to get to that four-o? NOT ME!

Which is ludicrous, since I really don’t feel my age (ok…well, MAYBE after a night out and a couple of drinks, my body does not bounce back as fast).  But, I been lucky in the gene department and most people think I’m in my early thirties (no I did not pay them to say that!) which gives me a huge boost of confident, that somehow, regardless of years of fighting my mother about not using the moisturizer she keep giving me … I can get away looking younger.

Which is to say that I’m not worry… no.at.all.

Specially when I found a couple of white hair this morning as I was blow-drying my hair.  Or that sometimes those lines between my eyes are more noticeable than before.

Because the other thing my mother gave me besides genes?

The ability to choose a good plastic surgeon.